I have an ongoing battle in my home with storage space. We have plenty of storage space but I also have plenty of junk stuff that I pack into it. I don't have trouble packing stuff into my storage spaces, I mostly have trouble organizing it and keeping it that way.

I have a shelf in my laundry room that is completely wasted storage space. It's one of those skinny white wire closet shelves that has a hanger bar below it to hang clothes, the above shelf had become a wasteland for random junk.

It's above my head so I'd literally fling stuff up there to get it out of the way and then I'd forget it was ever there. It slowly grew into a big mess of unorganized junk useful stuff that I will use at a later date.

YIKES!!

I finally got around to doing something about this terrible disaster of a shelf after a different storage organization mission failed.

See that big blue bin up there on the messy shelf?? I got several of those on clearance for $2 each. They are pretty big and usually 12.99 each! This was a sweet score (high-five to myself)!

They were going to go great in the cube shelving unit in the boy's playroom and hold lots of hot wheels, legos, etc...

Except they ended up being an inch too big to fit in the shelf. FAIL!!

Since they were so super-duper cheap I knew I could make good use of them elsewhere.

After I propped the first blue one up on my laundry shelf and it fit perfectly I knew I had a solution.

Woo Hoo!

I got rid of all the junk on the shelf and made labels for the boxes for useful items like art supplies, light bulbs, extension cords, and good old miscellaneous.

To make labels I used old scrapbook paper and found some ribbon for $1 at Hobby Lobby that matched perfect.

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Sorry about the picture quality, the laundry room doesn't have a window so the lighting isn't good for photos.

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Although navy and green apple wasn't really the color scheme I had in mind my laundry room isn't even decorated (SHHHH!!! Don't tell!) so it doesn't matter. It's actually kind of nice to have some color in there.